Monday, April 26, 2010

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week 2010: Day 1

Yesterday I was looking through random blogs when one particular post caught my eye. It was about Knitting and Crochet Blog Week 2009. This seemed exciting, and I hoped it was going on again this year, so I quickly Googled it. It starts today, by the way. Good timing! I'm going to try to participate for the whole week.

Starting Out

How and when did you begin knitting/crocheting? was it a skill passed down through generations of your family, or something you learned from Knitting For Dummies? What or who made you pick up the needles/hook for the first time? Was it the celebrity knitting ‘trend’ or your great aunt Hilda?

I think I've mentioned this before, but I'm more than happy to re-hash my crafting beginnings.

I first picked up knitting in college in the fall of 2004. A friend that I'd gone to high school had decided to withdraw and was trying to get rid of as much stuff as possible since she couldn't bring it all with her. I bought a basket of things off her, including some yarn, crochet hooks, and embroidery floss. Since I had no idea how to knit, I basically taught myself from websites since YouTube wasn't around yet. Stitchy Women was my local yarn store, but I didn't go very often. My grandmother knits, but she never taught me and no one else in my family knows how (to my knowledge).

While the basket of crafty goodness contained crochet hooks, I never could figure any of it out. I was having such a blast knitting I didn't really see a reason to, either. Then my half-brother died unexpectedly the week after I graduated in May of 2008. I turned 22 the week after that. I was fresh out of college, jobless, supposed to be planning for my wedding and all of a sudden the world had turned upside down. I stayed up until dawn because I was afraid to sleep. I couldn't even fathom conducting job interviews. I'd brought my knitting needles and a huge cone of cotton yarn with me when we were attending to everything post-death, so even knitting had negative connotations.

I needed distraction, and I needed it bad. I bought the Klutz learn-to-crochet book in late June, about a month later, and threw myself into learning a new craft. It was extremely therapeutic, and now I can say that I know how to knit AND crochet.